Last year in January, a video game hacking group known as Team-Xecuter revealed a Switch hack allowing players to run pirated games on Nintendo's hybrid device. Nintendo followed this up at the end of 2019, by taking legal action against a California resident named Sergio Moreno, who was accused of selling Team-Xecuter's mod devices, memory cards filled with pirated Nintendo games, and modified NES Classic systems.

In the latest update, Nintendo has now won an injunction against Moreno. As explained by TorrentFreak, it prohibits the defendant from "selling, renting, offering or distributing unauthorised copies" of Nintendo's works or infringing its trademarks.

Additionally, it prevents him from engaging in several other types of conduct, such as "challenging the validity or enforceability" of any Nintendo IP, right or protection method in "any forum in the future", hacking, modifying or circumventing the company's technical measures within its hardware or software, and reverse engineering any software developed by Nintendo or affiliated companies.

The defendant was required to provide written certification to Nintendo, stating how he was not in possession of any software or device used to circumvent the company's video games and systems at the time of the stipulated judgment and injunction, and if he was, it was destroyed. This applies to his agents as well. No fines were enforced, but both parties were required to cover their own costs and attorney fees.

When he’s not paying off a loan to Tom Nook, Liam likes to report on the latest Nintendo news and admire his library of video games. His favourite Nintendo character used to be a guitar-playing dog, but nowadays he prefers to hang out with Judd the cat.

There's always a debate about the moral ambiguity of hacking/pirating vs rom preservation and homebrew content. But selling modded systems for a profit is illegal no matter how you slice it. No grey areas there.

@Bobb Maybe this was a classic case of "Show us how you did this, and we won't sue you into oblivion"

Goes to show even when everyone tries to argue that exploits and hacking are simply just for homebrew and/or personal projects, there are people would still use it for piracy. Homebrew is just an indirect path to it. There's no argument since it all leads to the same thing.

Although I did delve into homebrew and coded some small apps myself back in the Wii days, I personally just stopped since piracy was becoming more and more prominent on the system.

Homebrew is great! But if it would just lead to people pirating games then I'd settle just making apps on my phone and tablet.

I'm sorry but this is just a slap on the wrist. The guy knowingly knew the stuff was pirated and modded, so he should've been fined or sent to jail for a little bit. If someone else wants to sell this stuff, they might think they will get a slap on their wrist but still make profit for anything sold previously.

So long as we support devs/publishers by legitimately purchasing games we should be free to do whatever we wish with our hardware and software, provided we don’t profit from it. Some games have massively benefited from rom hacks to fix/improve things. No different to mods with PC games. I own more than 500 physical games for various consoles and if I want to rip them to a HDD or modded classic console for convenience then I should be able to, after all I’ve paid my money for them.

@Desrever Surprisingly you see it all the time in the modding community as well, consoles being sold pre-loaded with games.

I can understand hard modding a console for profit, which I believe is legal (could be wrong).. but putting the games on there yourself and then selling? yeah thats kinda asking for trouble but a lot of people do actually do it

@Kalmaro One thing that kinda irks me with Nintendo tbh though, they don't just go after their own property, sometimes they just go after rom sites and stuff in general, which includes the more obscure games that aren't as available.

I mean we're always going to have ways to legally play our super mario worlds and such, its the rarer games I worry for.

I hope whatever comes after switch, we'll be able to use our switch cartirdges as well.. One thing that comes as a bummer for me in the console space is having to rebuy my games, re-released and such.. And these days nintendo aren't selling their classics but keeping them behind the subscription service (which makes me even more greatful for my classic mini consoles lol)

that being said, you would think nintendo would realize the futility of going after ROM sites at this point, i mean pirate bay's continued existence alone subverts nintendo's every effort & every time pirate bay got hit with a lawsuits, government attempts to get rid of it, hackers, ect it just got more deeply embedded and even started a religion along the way.and if the disney overlords & governments the world over can't get rid of it, nintendo throwing a law suit at it would be like flicking a dead fly at someone.

@Shadowmoon522 No, the ROM sites and modders/hackers give themselves a bad name, not just the guy selling it for profit. What everyone here is forgetting is that you own absolutely nothing but the disc/cartridge the game is loaded onto if you've purchased it physically, or nothing if digitally. The game itself isn't yours AT ALL. You merely own the plastic. You have no authority whatsoever to do anything with the game code aside from play it.

What you're all doing is defending theft of another's hard work, time, and money. Simple as that. Preservation is a great thing, but you're not allowed that privilege because it's not your property. 2020 and people still don't understand this, or is it the entitlement has grown too much and you demand it?

One has to be brain dead to think they can just sell pirated things in the open...

I also use emulators, but only for games i actually own and don't want to plug in my consoles for. Sometimes i'd play a game before buying, just to make sure it fits my taste. But f-me, being stupid enough to sell that stuff... lucky nintendo didn't break the man.

@Kalmaro Not quite easy though if said people don't even know WHO owns it.

There was even on article here on Nintendolife why we don't see some games get re-released by companies. Hell, things like Daytona USA for example is based off a real track, there's games with sponers and advertisements in the game and stuff like that.

It would be incredibly ignorant, look at how people failed to preserve old films of the past, and how much a lot of them regretted it.

This is why companies like Sega do what Nintendon't

Hell, the Sega Mega Drive Collection on Steam comes with rom files that can even run on retroarch ect.. That's how it's done

@NintyfanYou merely own the plastic. You have no authority whatsoever to do anything with the game code aside from play it.

This idea that you don't own your copy of a game and you only own the media it's stored on is just anti-consumer nonsense. Stop spreading it.

I own my copy of Ocarina of Time and I can sell it, play it, loan it out and destroy it and there is nothing Nintendo can do about it.

Keep in mind that if I sell it, play it or loan it out I am not loaning out a piece of plastic but rather a piece of plastic with a game on it. Without that game on it there would be very little (if any) value. Yet, with the game on there i can still sell it, loan it out or play it.

@Crono1973 - Nintendo is. When you purchase a copy of a game, you aren't purchasing the rights to that game or any trademarks. You are purchasing a limited software license that entitles you to play that game as per the terms of that license. You as well are purchasing the medium the software is stored in. When you play the game you are accepting the terms and conditions of that license. That's how the law works.

@Doofenshmirtz I stand by it though. The truth can hurt. Opinions can hurt. Can't blame the passionate homebrew community but they gotta realize the end simply justifies the means for a lot of people. Oh well...

@Averagewriter It's insane that some people believe that Nintendo owns all your physical games even though they can't prevent you from selling it at will, loaning it out at will, playing it at will and even destroying it at will.

I think you might want to tell all those sellers on ebay and all the retro shops that they don't own their inventory and therefore shouldn't be selling those games.

@strider100x Some of these people just love shooting themselves and other consumers in the foot for the benefit of corporations. They must think that one day Nintendo will come door to door to collect those old game cartridges or atleast they believe that Nintendo has the legal right to do so. Worst kind of consumers.

@Crono1973 - and again, I must remind you that this "insanity" of which you speak is the foundation of how copyright law works in regards to software.
It's called an End User License Agreement. Might want to look it up.

@Crono1973 - they are legally binding, yes. You can "lol" all you want, you can dislike the terms all you want, but the fact is that you're wrong. You've been wrong the entire time you've been posting on this thread. And anything else you post will not mitigate that plain and simple fact.My post doesn't concern morality. It doesn't concern whether something is "the right thing to do". My post is entirely about fact and legality, nothing more, nothing less.

@Averagewriter No one believes that when they buy a game that they own the copyright so that's just a strawman on your part.

When you buy a physical game you own that copy. You do not own the copyright but you own your copy and since you own your copy you can do what you want with that copy as long as you don't violate the copyright (which is to say, you can't make illegal copies).

An EULA doesn't override consumer rights so if an EULA says that you can't resell your SNES game, then it isn't enforcable because consumers (atleast in the US) have the First Sale Doctrine.

I don't know why people like you want to convince others that they don't own the copies of retro games that they have had for years. No one is going to come take their games and there would no legal basis for them to do so.

@Crono1973 - That's all you have? I'm disappointed but I'm not surprised. You'll have to do a lot better, but you won't get the chance. Why is that? Because I've blocked you now. You've already lost the argument and all your credibility with it. Anything beyond this is just eating time.Off with you now.

@rjc-32 Facts! Funnily enough, all the visual issues in Xenoblade 2 in handheld mode that are common complaints are a non-issue with a modded config file. The game looks better in handheld mode than docked with a modded system, to be honest.

@Doktor-Mandrake Don't worry about ROM sites and preservation; when it comes to ROMs we're fine. Any place Nintendo takes down isn't ultimately important, and just makes general piracy a bit more difficult. It won't affect preservation. Something like the recent closure of the FFShrine forums is far worse. Regardless of your stance on music piracy, there was a lot of content there that simply isn't available anywhere else, both community works (eg. gamerips) and published albums that aren't available legally anymore. Most of the old content on the website was archived but a lot was still lost.